Hennessy on Frozen Salary Caps, Hooters Shorts, and "Fat Man Running" Rule
Matthew Pickut
Wednesday January 29, 2003
JH: 50… (laughs) We’ll bring in as many as we need to, and really that’s at any position…we’ll bring in however many guys it takes to better the program.
AF: This year with the salary cap changes some players took less money. What went into that? How did you work that out?
JH: From the collective bargaining side, the players and the owners went back to the table, and reworked a deal, which we think long term is tremendous news for the league. By now I think everyone is pretty clear on the structure of the deal. We have the longest collective bargaining agreement in professional sports, which is wonderful that it’s something we’re not going to have to address for a while. The players, short term, took some hits to hopefully be in the position long term to reap some benefits with whatever success the league has. It did mean though that the so-called three-year plan for the Firebirds went out the window, in regard to the salary cap and how we deal with it. There are a number of things that changed with the CBA. We obviously extended our season two full games, 16 games instead of 14. It used to be that we would pay players halfpay during training camp for games, so we actually increased our salaries one full cycle. Our salary cap was supposed to go up from $1.64 million to $1.73 and it froze at $1.64. That right there is about a turn around in what I thought I’d have available.
The way that they looked at worker’s compensation also changed. Normally we were able to use our actual workers’ comp premium as our number against the cap. We’ve been told that we now have to use our league average, so we went from what would have been $90,000 to $240,000. So there is another $150,000. And for the first time they’re using the workers’ comp indemnity payments against us, which is money paid to players who are injured during the season who couldn’t work in the off-season because of those injuries. We had about a $90,000 hit against us there. So I end up $240,000 over the cap. At that point it was about a $470,000 turn around.
AF: So how did you get all the signings done?
JH: Well, we got pretty much everyone we wanted back that we wanted to, and I think that’s a testament to a couple of things: first and foremost to the market out there. It was not a player-friendly market. We were not the only team that took a hit with the change in the salary cap, other teams did also. I don’t know how many it affected as much as it did us but I’ll tell you it effected a bunch of teams. So the market out there wasn’t as player-friendly as in the past. But I think more to the point, it’s a testament to the players themselves, the organization, Coach Dailey. A lot of those guys have been with us for a number of years, so they feel ownership in the program. They care about where they go to work every day. Most of them love and respect Coach Dailey and they like Indianapolis and they believe that every year we come to camp with a chance to win a championship. Somehow they were able to find a way to restructure their deal and still survive.
The hardest thing to do is pick up the phone and tell a guy who we signed to a two-year contract a year ago that I can’t pay him that money. That he’ll have to work for this or he’ll have to work for someone else because those guys have families and mortgages and everything else that everyone else who walks the face of the Earth has. So certainly for all those guys who did take some pay cuts there is a lot of gratitude from the organization for doing such. It was a difficult off-season not only for the players, but also on our end.
AF: You did manage to do quite a bit of signing in the off-season. What are you most proud about?
JH: The signing of Clay Rush was obviously very important for the team. Nelson Garner had been a good kicker for us for a bunch of years, but had a difficult season last year, and he’d be the first to tell you that. I’m glad that Nelson signed on with Arizona, although he’ll probably be back here kicking my butt during the season. It’s tough because kickers are a unique brand of people. Nelson had a great year two years ago, and then has a season like last year. We’re certainly hoping that Clay has the kind of season that he’s had in the past and maybe goes back to the 2000 season where he was kicker of the year. He’s got a lot of strength in his leg and can kick the ball off the net, which is extremely important, and in some respects more important than field-goal kicking.
We also did a lot even when we were mired in the middle of a horrible slump last year. We made the decision on how we could get some young guys and some guys with some more speed. We brought in WR/DB’s Donald Shoals (Tulsa), Tim Dodge (Iowa), Terrance Blackwell (Southern) and Brian McDonald (Louisville). Hopefully one or two of those guys will make the team and contribute this year. We’re also pretty high on Demetrious Maxie (OL/DL, Texas El Paso).
We joked about the QB situation, but with Raymond’s torn rotator cuff and even though we hope he comes back full speed, we’d be unrealistic to not bring some other guys in and we’re pretty happy with who we did bring in.
AF: One thing I have noticed is that the Firebirds might have the best dressed front office in the AFL. I came to the scrimmage and I felt pretty good because I had a tie on, and then I sit down next to Ari Wolfe and he blows me away. Is that an organizational thing or what?
JH: (Laughs) Well Ari is a clothes horse, that’s the first thing. If he’s the point guy then that’s the guy we want to keep out there looking good, because he’s better dressed than anyone else in the organization. Ari has always been that guy. Ari hung around with [Greg] Hopkins and so if he was going to hang with Hopkins he had to be well dressed because otherwise he would have been left behind. Ari knew the importance of his role with Hopkins [to have Hopkins pick out his clothes].
AF: How are season tickets going this year with the change to the earlier season?
JH: Our renewals are not where we want them to be. Some of that is certainly due to the economy, but also to the change in seasons. People buy season tickets thinking that you’re going to play from April to June and then all of a sudden you say that you’re starting Feb 1. That doesn’t always work with their schedule. Sometimes there are conflicts. We ask people why they are not renewing and that’s one of the reasons they give. Which actually gives me hope even more for 2004 because all the new season tickets we’re selling to people and the people that have renewed will know what the schedule is. So I expect next year to be even better than this year. I’m hoping that by the time we kick off we will have surpassed our first year numbers.
AF: Has the change to Sunday games been a bit of a hard sell?
JH: To be honest we don’t really know yet. It hasn’t been bad. Again there are some people who had season tickets that didn’t renew due to not only the change in seasons, but also the change in days, and there people who we are selling season tickets to who are happy with the Sunday games. Our thought is that if the league was going to be televising Sunday afternoon football and our season was going to start the week after the Super Bowl, certainly people in Indianapolis were comfortable going to Sunday afternoon football games, so it wouldn`t be that much of a transition. In our mind we wanted to get every game possible on Sundays because we want to be on NBC as much as possible, and then it makes sense to me to get all our games on Sunday so that people know when the Firebirds play in Indianapolis. We hope long term that it’s going to be a positive thing.
AF: How is the new ownership working out? I know it’s from Hooters. Has there been an effort to get the front office into tighter suits or what?
JH: No, I do have a pair of orange shorts and a t-shirt that I wear around the house, but I don’t wear it at the office. I’m the only one that did that. I just went out and did that on my own. (laughs) No, there hasn’t been a change in the dress code, but the new ownership change is a great one for us. I think the Arena Football League has grown leaps and bounds because of its ownership and the fact that Lags, as we affectionately call him, is the guy running the ship brings some excitement. When I went to him and told him that we wanted to move our offices out of the Fieldhouse and increase our staff so that we were prepared for this upcoming season and the future of the AFL and that the only way we could do it was to go after it 100% and that would include adding a significant amount of money to our operating budget, he said go ahead and do it. I put out a three-year plan for him and explained to him where I thought we would be in three years and he looked at it, and paid a lot of attention to it and gave me the O.K. to move forward. So we’ve gone from six full-time people to 19 full-time people. We’ve moved our offices out of the field house. And I want to thank the people from Pacer’s Sports Entertainment for letting us stay there for two seasons, but certainly we could not have fit 19 people into those offices. We were in the former break room and it was just barely room for six, to be honest with you.
AF: Speaking of the working environment, you’re picking up the radio show with Ari on 950AM. How’s work on that going?
JH: Good. I’ll be honest with you, Ari, Tim [Farrell] , and Rob Blackwell are doing most of the prep work for the show. We had a meeting about it last week to talk about what we wanted to do. I got a kick out of your wonderful explanation of the show [note: he actually said that, I have it on tape!], we will be doing at least one dance number every single show…
AF: Fantastic…
JH: It’s slated right now at 6:50 [PM] and I will be dancing and there will be singing, but the singing won’t be from me. (Laughs) I got a kick out of how you described it because it will be a variety show, but I don’t think it will be a variety show like the Ed Sullivan show or the Smothers show, but certainly it will a show with variety, meaning that it’s not going to be a hard sell. X and O’s Football Show. It’s my opinion that we are going to teach the game of Arena Football when we have the opportunity to do so, but I also want to have some fun with it, and talk about the league. I’m going to try and be as candid about it as I can be as general manager of the football team. There is a fine line, certainly.
AF: Well, you’ve already talked about wearing the shorts, I don’t know how much more candid you can be.
JH: Well, that won’t be at the remotes, although Hooters would probably like that. I’m not sure that the bar we’re going to or anyone else in the world would like that. You’ve seen me! But I want the show to be fun. You can tune in for an hour and learn something about Arena Football. We’ll promote the team, we’re going to market the team, but I want people to when they are done with the hour feel like they’ve learned some things, but also had a good time.
AF: You brought in Grand Rapids for two days for a scrimmage, and I brought this up last year, but they have some very large people running the ball. Is there any movement on that front, you know getting a “Fat Man Running” rule into effect?
JH: They did have some massive people, but here we go again with the “Fat Man Running.” Did you want one series or once a quarter or what?
AF: Frankly, I’ll take anything I can get. Big guys like me need role models.
JH: I have to meet with Coach Dailey this afternoon. I’ll bring it up. I brought it up last year and then I found my butt in the parking lot soon after. To be honest I don’t think we have the guys for it. We have Kyle [Moore-Brown] but I don’t see him taking the toss and going sweep right. I’ll bring it up but I don’t think it will fly.
AF: Ah, but just think about it. Think of season tickets you’d sell.
JH: I just did think about it, and now I’ve stopped – but I’ll bring it up.
AF: I’d appreciate anything you can do. Thanks and good luck this season.
JH: No problem. Looking forward to hearing from you this season.
Matthew Pickut is a pastor in northern Indiana and a long time AFL fan. He also writes for his own website: The Brown Paper Blog. He graduated from Taylor University in Upland Indiana (class of `96) with degrees in Biblical Literature and Sociology as well as a healthy respect for the medicinal properties of coffee.
